Mardi: and A Voyage Thither Volume II Part 21

none of your sentiment now; my soul is martially inclined; I want clarion peals, not lute warblings. So throw out your chest, Yoomy: lift high your voice; and blow me the old battle-blast.--Begin, sir minstrel."

And warning all, that he himself had not composed the odious chant, Yoomy thus:--

Our clubs! our clubs!

The thousand clubs of Narvi!

Of the living trunk of the Palm-tree made; Skull breakers! Brain spatterers!

Wielded right, and wielded left; Life quenchers! Death dealers!

Causing live bodies to run headless!

Our bows! our bows!

The thousand bows of Narvi!

Ribs of Tara, G.o.d of War!

Fas.h.i.+oned from the light Tola their arrows; Swift messengers! Heart piercers!

Barbed with sharp pearl sh.e.l.ls; Winged with white tail-plumes; To wild death-chants, strung with the hair of wild maidens!

Our spears! our spears!

The thousand spears of Narvi!

Of the thunder-riven Moo-tree made Tall tree, couched on the long mountain Lana!

No staves for gray-beards! no rods for fishermen!

Tempered by fierce sea-winds, Splintered into lances by lightnings, Long arrows! Heart seekers!

Toughened by fire their sharp black points!

Our slings! our slings!

The thousand slings of Narvi!

All ta.s.seled, and braided, and gayly bedecked.

In peace, our girdles; in war, our war-nets; Wherewith catch we heads as fish from the deep!

The pebbles they hurl, have been hurled before,-- Hurled up on the beach by the stormy sea!

Pebbles, buried erewhile in the head of the shark: To be buried erelong in the heads of our foes!

Home of hard blows, our pouches!

Nest of death-eggs! How quickly they hatch!

Uplift, and couch we our spears, men!

Ring hollow on the rocks our war clubs!

Bend we our bows, feel the points of our arrows: Aloft, whirl in eddies our sling-nets; To the fight, men of Narvi!

Sons of battle! Hunters of men!

Raise high your war-wood!

Shout Narvi! her groves in the storm!

"By Oro!" cried Media, "but Yoomy has well nigh stirred up all Babbalanja's devils in me. Were I a mortal, I could fight now on a pretense. And did any man say me nay, I would charge upon him like a spear-point. Ah, Yoomy, thou and thy tribe have much to answer for; ye stir up all Mardi with your lays. Your war chants make men fight; your drinking songs, drunkards; your love ditties, fools. Yet there thou sittest, Yoomy, gentle as a dove.--What art thou, minstrel, that thy soft, singing soul should so master all mortals? Yoomy, like me, you sway a scepter."

"Thou honorest my calling overmuch," said Yoomy, we minstrels but sing our lays carelessly, my lord Media."

"Ay: and the more mischief they make."

"But sometimes we poets are didactic."

"Didactic and dull; many of ye are but too apt to be prosy unless mischievous."

"Yet in our verses, my lord Media, but few of us purpose harm."

"But when all harmless to yourselves, ye may be otherwise to Mardi."

"And are not foul streams often traced to pure fountains, my lord?"

said Babbalanja. "The essence of all good and all evil is in us, not out of us. Neither poison nor honey lodgeth in the flowers on which, side by side, bees and wasps oft alight. My lord, nature is an immaculate virgin, forever standing unrobed before us. True poets but paint the charms which all eyes behold. The vicious would be vicious without them."

"My lord Media," impetuously resumed Yoomy, "I am sensible of a thousand sweet, merry fancies, limpid with innocence; yet my enemies account them all lewd conceits."

"There be those in Mardi," said Babbalanja, "who would never ascribe evil to others, did they not find it in their own hearts; believing none can be different from themselves."

"My lord, my lord!" cried Yoomy. "The air that breathes my music from me is a mountain air! Purer than others am I; for though not a woman, I feel in me a woman's soul."

"Ah, have done, silly Yoomy," said Media. "Thou art becoming flighty, even as Babbalanja, when Azzageddi is uppermost."

"Thus ever: ever thus!" sighed Yoomy. "They comprehend us not."

"Nor me," said Babbalanja. "Yoomy: poets both, we differ but in seeming; thy airiest conceits are as the shadows of my deepest ponderings; though Yoomy soars, and Babbalanja dives, both meet at last. Not a song you sing, but I have thought its thought; and where dull Mardi sees but your rose, I unfold its petals, and disclose a pearl. Poets are we, Yoomy, in that we dwell without us; we live in grottoes, palms, and brooks; we ride the sea, we ride the sky; poets are omnipresent."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV Of The Isle Of Diranda

In good time the sh.o.r.es of Diranda were in sight. And, introductory to landing, Braid-Beard proceeded to give us some little account of the island, and its rulers.

As previously hinted, those very magnificent and ill.u.s.trious lord seigniors, the lord seigniors h.e.l.lo and Piko, who between them divided Diranda, delighted in all manner of public games, especially warlike ones; which last were celebrated so frequently, and were so fatal in their results, that, not-withstanding the multiplicity of nuptials taking place in the isle, its population remained in equilibrio. But, strange to relate, this was the very object which the lord seigniors had in view; the very object they sought to compa.s.s, by inst.i.tuting their games. Though, for the most part, they wisely kept the secret locked up.

But to tell how the lord seigniors h.e.l.lo and Piko came to join hands in this matter.

Diranda had been amicably divided between them ever since the day they were crowned; one reigning king in the East, the other in the West.

But King Piko had been long hara.s.sed with the thought, that the un.o.bstructed and indefinite increase of his browsing subjects might eventually denude of herbage his portion of the island. Posterity, thought he, is marshaling her generations in squadrons, brigades, and battalions, and ere long will be down upon my devoted empire. Lo! her locust cavalry darken the skies; her light-troop pismires cover the earth. Alas! my son and successor, thou wilt inhale choke-damp for air, and have not a private corner to say thy prayers.

By a sort of arithmetical progression, the probability, nay, the certainty of these results, if not in some way averted, was proved to King Piko; and he was furthermore admonished, that war--war to the haft with King h.e.l.lo--was the only cure for so menacing an evil.

But so it was, that King Piko, at peace with King h.e.l.lo, and well content with, the tranquillity of the times, little relished the idea of picking a quarrel with his neighbor, and running its risks, in order to phlebotomize his redundant population.

"Patience, most ill.u.s.trious seignior," said another of his sagacious Ahithophels, "and haply a pestilence may decimate the people."

But no pestilence came. And in every direction the young men and maidens were recklessly rus.h.i.+ng into wedlock; and so salubrious the climate, that the old men stuck to the outside of the turf, and refused to go under.

At last some Machiavel of a philosopher suggested, that peradventure the object of war might be answered without going to war; that peradventure King h.e.l.lo might be brought to acquiesce in an arrangement, whereby the men of Diranda might be induced to kill off one another voluntarily, in a peaceable manner, without troubling their rulers. And to this end, the games before mentioned were proposed.

"Egad! my wise ones, you have hit it," cried Piko; "but will h.e.l.lo say ay?"

"Try him, most ill.u.s.trious seignior," said Machiavel.

So to h.e.l.lo went emba.s.sadors ordinary and extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary and peculiar; and anxiously King Piko awaited their return.

The mission was crowned with success.